"The fact that this film is constructed to endorse the exercise of murderers, to emphasize killer bravado and generate glee in frantic manifestations of death is, to my mind, a sharp indictment of it as so-called entertainment in this day."
Extract from Bosley Crowther's Review of FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE
* * *
I watched KEOMA this afternoon.
I got to admit it was probably my favorite so far, after THE GREAT SILENCE.
Nero is excellent as the bullied half-breed bastard. While he is not subject to the same level of torture that he suffers under Corbucci, he is hidden behind the full Grizzly Adams beard and silly half-injun mullet - which must have been a sort of torture for such a pretty, pretty boy.
I also loved the fact that the drama for the first 1/3 of the film trying to foil the attempts to quarantine the plague victims.
The flashbacks are magnificently interwoven to furl out the existential dramatic curtain, but abruptly disappear once the brothers are named in the plague camp. Still the high theater of such a conceit is rare in the genre. Leone uses a similar soft focus dream-state flashback in FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, but the intermingling of time in place is a great device which works well.
The second act starts to solidify the story of courage and standing up to the town's posse leading boss. So that the prolonged last act can end in a hail of bullets and slow motion falling bodies. Excellent.
Joined: 2007-09-14
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